Emotions and academic performance in physics: Context orientation in teaching electricity (EmoPhy)

• Applicants: Professorin Wenke Möhring; Professor Dr. Jan Winkelmann
• Subject Area: General and Domain-Specific Teaching and Learning
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 572119666

Physics is considered as a difficult and unpopular subject. To improve the understanding and perceived relevance of physics content, situated learning embedded in context-orientated learning objects has been seen as an approach for successful instruction for decades. The underlying hope is that references to the everyday world would positively influence students' learning and emotions. Regarding the development of academic performance, however, the current research shows an ambivalent picture of the effect of contextualization. One explanation stresses that contexts may contain additional distracting details, which interfere with the central learning content. In addition, the impact of contextualization on students' emotional experience has yet to be investigated. The proposed project aims to close these research gaps. Using a cross-over intervention-control group design, the effect of context orientation in physics lessons will be investigated on students' emotional experiences and academic performance. Based on the control-value theory of emotions, students' control and value judgments about the lessons will be examined and related to their learning and performance emotions. In addition, cognitive load will be measured when different contexts are taught, which makes it possible to reveal potential mechanisms of context orientation on academic performance. The project will use an established teaching concept for electricity, which is a particularly abstract subject area in physics lessons. The teaching concept is available in two parallelized versions, one with and one version without context orientation. In the proposed project, teachers and their students will be randomly assigned to one version and initially teach according to this concept. After half of the series of lessons, teachers will switch to the other condition following instructions. Student's academic performance and emotional experiences will be measured at the beginning, when switching conditions, and after the entire series of lessons. During the lesson sequence, students will be asked continuously about their cognitive load, their control-value cognitions, and their emotions after each lesson. This repeated survey captures students' emotions and cognitions realistically and immediately in each physics lesson and will allow a differentiated view onto different micro-contexts, with implications for the internal differentiation of physics lessons. The results will provide insights into the effects of context orientation on students' performance and emotions. Given the declining performance of students in STEM disciplines (e.g., measured in the last Pisa study) and the shortage of skilled workers, such insights are particularly important and will allow direct implications for theory and practice.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants